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Lobster Croquettes

A fried dish of lobster meat mixed with butter, flour, cream, and egg, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Lobster Croquettes

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lobster Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Chop the lobster flesh finely.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, stir in the flour, and add less than ½ cup of cold water. Boil well.

  3. Add the lobster, cream or milk, cayenne, salt, and pepper. Stir over heat until hot.

  4. Add the egg yolk when the mixture thickens. Spread on a plate to cool.

  5. Shape the mixture into cutlets or corks.

Coat and serve

  1. Brush with egg, coat with breadcrumbs, and fry in hot fat until golden brown.

  2. Drain well, arrange on a napkin or dish paper, garnish with fried parsley, and serve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main flavour and the body of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the base mixture.
Flour
Thickens the cooked butter and water into a binding base.
Egg yolk
Binds the mixture and helps it set when cooled.
Breadcrumbs
Forms a crisp, golden coating when fried.

The step that matters

Add the egg yolk when the mixture thickens. Adding yolk to a mixture that is still very hot can scramble it and make it lumpy. Letting the base thicken first lets the yolk blend in smoothly and bind the filling as it cools.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, butter, flour, cream, egg, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, flour, cream, egg, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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